From the August 2022 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
The Grady Health System in Atlanta, Georgia is one of the largest safety net health systems in the United States. Grady consists of the 953-bed Grady Memorial Hospital, six neighborhood health centers, and the Marcus Stroke and Neuroscience Center. With its nationally acclaimed emergency medical services, Grady has the premier Level I trauma center in the metro Atlanta region and handles over 700,000 patient visits each year. Grady was named one of the nation’s “Most Wired” hospitals for the 8th year in a row and earned the HIMSS Analytics “Stage 7” designation.
Over the past five years, Grady clinicians and executives have closely collaborated with Vizzia Technologies, a leading software and managed service provider of real-time location systems (RTLS). Grady has leveraged Vizzia to enhance their asset management, environmental monitoring, and patient workflow procedures, saving the hospital time and money.
Asset management optimization
Grady initially selected Vizzia to optimize their legacy asset tracking system. The Vizzia professional services team conducted clinical interviews to discover use cases and performed an extensive audit to ensure maximum facility coverage.
Vizzia then delivered two powerful software modules of Asset Management and Environmental Monitoring to Grady. This enabled their biomedical engineering department to monitor thousands of medical devices and clinical supplies in real-time across all their facilities.
Coupled with Vizzia’s fully managed solutions and on-site support team, they helped Grady to increase utilization rates of their devices and reduce staff time looking for clean supplies.
Clinical environmental monitoring
Vizzia is also protecting Grady’s critical medical supplies, to include blood storage and COVID-19 vaccines. Real-time alerts let clinicians know if a refrigerator or freezer deviates from desired conditions to protect important and expensive products. Vizzia is the only RTLS provider to offer a fully-managed service that provides live 24/7 customer service that proactively contacts clinicians to ensure alert resolution.
Vizzia’s Environmental Monitoring solution is fully compliant with key federal guidelines from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Commerce National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Stroke patient workflow
Grady’s Marcus Stroke and Neuroscience Center has become a magnet for patients from across the Southeast. Designated a Joint Commission Comprehensive Stroke Center, it is one of a handful of elite facilities providing complex stroke care in the United States.
